


We were never more here

by someinstant



Series: Kinetics [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-27 17:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13886124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: The expanse getting broader.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Look, this is RPF, and I'm not sure if I'm ashamed of myself or not. Basically: I am aware that the people I'm writing about have their own interior lives and complications, and I know nothing about them beyond what I see in snippets on television. I'm good with that. So just imagine that the people in this story are people who just happen to have the same names as Scott and Tessa, and who have broadly similar interests. Beyond that, I make absolutely no claims.
> 
> Also I know basically nothing about the technicalities of ice dancing. And the timeline's probably wonky.
> 
> But I don't particularly care, because this has been eating at my brain since their free dance, so: I wrote y'all a story.

 It comes in waves, she wants to say, sometimes rolling unseen through open depths, sometimes striking upon the shallows and rising up, desire made visible, to crest and crash and wash back out in a breath.  It was harder to control when they were younger. Everything was harder to control when they were younger: lifts, their edges, the way her heart started pounding the summer she was fourteen, the way his eyes sometimes dropped to her mouth when she bit it in practice.

“I’m going to take five,” Scott got good at saying, when he was somewhere between sixteen and seventeen.

“I think I had it on that one,” she protested the first time it happened.  “Let’s just do the ending sequence one more time, then take a break, okay?”

“Tessa,” Marina had said, knowing, catching her on the elbow.  “Give him a moment to breathe. Now. Tell me what felt different. Deep bend to the knees helps, yes?”  Over Marina’s shoulder she could see Scott, hands against the board, head slumped forward. She hoped he wasn’t angry at her. It happened sometimes, more often now than it used to when they were in middle school, and then she felt sick for days, wondering what she had said or done.

Later, after he came back, after they went through the added minute to the tango four more times, after everything felt awkward and stiff and Scott would barely look at her, let alone touch her-- when she had asked, sitting next to him while she tied her trainers, waiting for her host mother to come and pick her up from the rink, he’d flushed and shook his head.  “I’m not angry at you,” he said, and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Did I hurt you coming off the lift?” she asked, glancing at his lap.  She’d got him with a knee to the balls more than once coming out of the stationary lift, and he wasn’t usually shy about letting her know it.  “You know, in--”

“Jeez, Tess,” he snapped, hunching over and-- that was Scott when he was angry.  Sharp and biting and flushed along his cheekbones. “No, you didn’t hurt me. Let it go, okay?”

“I don’t want to,” she argued.  “If I’m messing up-- if I’m messing you up-- I need to know so I can fix it.”

“It’s not that,” he said, and wouldn’t look at her.  He tugged at his hair a little. It was getting long again; his mum had been complaining about it for the past couple of weeks.  She said it needed to be cut before their next competition, but Tessa liked his hair when it was longer. Finally, Scott sighed a little, and turned to face her.  “It’s really not you,” he told her, looking over her left shoulder. “It’s just, sometimes, you know, when you’re right up against me like that--”

“Like what?” she had asked, not understanding, because she was barely fifteen and while she might have had greater familiarity with bodies than most girls her age, it was mostly in the context of an extension of sporting equipment.

“Oh my god, Tess,” he said, before muffling his face with his hands.  “Please don’t make me explain.”

“I don’t,” she started, and then remembered the way he’d angled his torso away from hers, hips jerking, releasing her as soon as she was safely down.  “Oh,” she said, and wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Was she supposed to be-- flattered? Freaked out? She looked down at her hands in her lap. Scott was-- he was-- she _liked_ him, she knew that, sometimes her heart felt like it was tripping over itself in her chest, but when she thought about him, it was mostly--

“I’m just going to go die now,” Scott had said, matter-of-fact, face still covered by his hands.

“Hey, no,” she protested, tugging at his sleeve, trying to get him to look at her because she didn’t have to know how she felt about him to know that she didn’t want him to feel like _that_ , “No, it’s-- okay. I just thought,” she said, trying to be grown up about it when she didn’t know how, her cheeks burning, “Aren’t you dating what’s-her-name?”  Shannon, or Shanna, or something. She was Scott’s age, and didn’t skate. She was pretty, and Tessa didn’t know her well.

“Yeah,” he said. He rested his elbows on his knees.   “Kinda, I think.”

She bumped against his shoulder.  “Kinda, you think,” she said, trying to get a smile out of him.

He rolled his eyes, and she felt the knot in her stomach loosen.  “We hung out last Friday, so yeah.”

“Good,” Tessa said.  She crossed her ankles, then uncrossed them.  “Good! I know you like her. So.”

Scott nodded. Cleared his throat.  “So that was just-- bodies doing what they do, I think,” he said.  He sounded like he’d had practiced saying that, or someone had said it to him, more than once.  “I’m sorry about it, though.”

She shook her head.  “Not your fault.” The absolution was automatic. Lots of things were Scott’s fault: how loud he was, sometimes, how small he could make her feel with a misplaced joke, how he was someone different in front of his friends. But she couldn’t blame Scott for a pulled hamstring or blisters, and he didn’t blame her for cramps.  This was the same, she decided. Just bodies. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s not your fault, either,” he told her, serious, and that was what she liked about him so much, no matter what. He knew the things that liked to sit in the back of her brain, waiting until she’d grown used to them before they came whispering.  “How about, if it happens again, I just ask if we can take a break.”

Tessa nodded.  “I promise I won’t make fun of you,” she said, and Scott snorted.

“Don’t do _that_ ,” he told her. “I mean, _I'm_  probably going to make fun of me, once I get over being embarrassed about it.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to smother a smile.  “Then I promise I won’t tell Danny about it,” and he shoved her off the bench.

* * *

Or maybe it’s more like a wildfire.  It’s worse when the fuel builds up, she thinks, ignored undergrowth filling in spaces better left empty, embers flying on shifting winds across firebreaks.  It happens so quickly, and the result: ash.

* * *

“You need to tell Scott first,” her mum said, and Tessa had nodded, absent, forehead brushing up against the passenger window. It looked like she felt outside, all grey and unconvincing. “Then you two can decide what you want to do for the season and how you want to tell Marina and Igor.”

“Season’s over,” she said, because it was.  Her shins throbbed, and she just wanted to sleep for a month and not think.

Her mother hummed, non-committal.  “What about Scott?”

“What about him?”  She exhaled against the window, and pressed her fingertip to the fog.  “His legs are fine.” He’ll be glad of the break from me, she didn’t say, but it was probably true.  She’d been miserable to be around over the past several months, short-tempered and frustrated by pain, silently jealous of Scott’s ease on the ice and off it.

There was a weighted quiet, tires humming along the road.

“That might be the single most selfish thing I’ve ever heard you say,” her mum said, and Tessa opened her mouth to argue.  “No,” her mother cut her off, blinking rapidly at the road ahead. “No, you were raised better than that. Get out your phone and tell Scott you need to talk to him.”

“Mum,” she protested, and her mother hit the turn signal, crossing the ridges along the side of the road to come to a stop on the shoulder.  “Mum, what are you doing?” she said, craning her head look out the rear window as a tractor trailer thundered by. “This isn’t safe.”

Her mother pressed a knuckle against her eye and snapped, “Well, it’s not safe for me to drive when I can’t see, either.”

“I’m sorry,” Tessa offered after a moment, because that seemed like what she should probably say.

Her mother shook her head, took a breath, and put the left turn signal back on.  “Call Scott,” she said, no bend to her voice. Tessa took out her phone and texted him instead.

-*-

He came in to the coffee shop laughing, on the phone with someone.  She had no idea who it was. He waved at her, and tilted his head towards the counter: Want anything?  She held up her mug and shook her head.

“Pretty dire-sounding text,” he said when he sat down, sliding his phone into his pocket.  He’d ordered tea, probably the caffeine-free kind he hated, because at the end of the day Scott was better at sticking to their nutritional plans than she was.  “Somebody die?”

Tessa rolled her eyes.  “No,” she said. Tapped her finger on the rim of her mug.  Tried to think of the best way to word it, but-- there wasn’t anything there.

Scott leaned back on his chair.  He just took up so much _space_ , unthinking, and she didn’t know how he could stand it.  “You’re freaking me out a little, Tess.” He eyed her cooling mug of hot chocolate.  She’d even asked for whipped cream, because why the hell not. “It’s got to be serious if there’s chocolate involved.”

She nodded a couple of times, and just decided to go for it.  Band-aid off. “I’m out for the season,” she said, and wrapped her hands around the mug for something to do.  “I need surgery on my legs.”

She watched him blink, visibly trying to figure out what she meant.  “You need surgery for stress fractures?” Because stress fractures were what she had told him, wrapping her shins with ice and plastic wrap and breathing _in_ two-three-four, _out_ two-three-four against the burning cramps.

“It’s not stress fractures.  It’s a circulation thing,” she said, and oh, this was not going to be good.

The concern on his face slid into confusion.  “So they misdiagnosed the stress fractures?”

She shook her head.  Shrugged. “No,” she said.  Started again. “Well. Yes, initially, but--”

“Initially. How long have you known about this?” he interrupted.  He was catching on, and she thought she might throw up.

“I found out about the surgery this afternoon,” she offered, and his mouth tightened.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

She shrugged again.  Looked at the table between them, her fingers red and chapped around the mug, knuckles white.  “I don’t know, a month? Something like that.” There was a sticky ring from someone else’s drink on the table. She focused on it so she wouldn’t have to see the anger on Scott’s face. There wasn’t a way to make a month sound like less of a betrayal to someone who had basically grown up with her body as an extension of his own.

Scott was quiet, and stayed quiet. In the background, the espresso machine sputtered and Jason Mraz sang a terrible hook, tinny over the shop’s speakers.  She wasn’t sure how long the silence between them lasted.

“You ever going to look at me again?” he asked at last, and she gave up. He looked-- blank, the way he did when the scores weren’t fair and the camera was in their face, or when Marina was chewing them out for something ridiculous, or when Tessa laughed at him in public for making a stupid mistake.  She hated that look, especially when she was the one responsible for it.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice caught in her throat.

“I don’t think we should do this here,” he said, standing up.  “I’m probably going to yell, and you don’t like crying in public.”  

She pushed herself upright to join him.  Didn’t hide the wince from him this time.  “I might yell, too,” she warned him, because she’d wanted to scream at the whole world for about three months. Scott included.

He nodded.  “I bet. You good for a walk?” he asked, and she laughed. It sounded a little hysterical.

“It feels like my legs are burning from the inside out when I walk,” she told him, because that was the truth of it.  Gestured to them, throbbing beneath her jeans. “Or like they’re going to split open. Just, like the skin’s about to burst and everything’s about to spill out everywhere--”

“Okay, Tess,” he said, and an arm wrapped around her waist, taking some of her weight while she bit her lip, looking up at the ceiling.  Because while he might be angry, Scott wasn’t knowingly, calculatingly cruel. She should have remembered that. “I’ve got you.”

So they went for a drive instead, evening coming on fast behind low clouds.

Later, after he dropped her off in front of her parents’ house, voice hoarse as he asked if she needed help getting to the door-- later, her mother asked if they had come up with a plan for the remainder of the season.

“I’m going to get my legs cut open, it’ll be great,” Tessa said, trying on an unconvincing smile.  “Scott’s going to keep training. One of us has to be in decent shape for next season, anyway.”

“He doesn’t want a different partner?” her mum asked, and that was it: that was the question she’d asked, or not asked, the two of them parked in a half-built subdivision under the sodium yellow of a streetlight.  

“You could skate the rest of the season with someone else,” Tessa had said, tired, watching his face in the windshield’s reflection.  

“No, I couldn’t.” He waved the idea away like a gnat. “What, you’ve got an understudy ready who’s in Grand Prix condition? If you’re not competing this season, I’m not competing. That’s how it works.”

“You could get a new partner,” she said. Guilt weighed on her tongue.  

“I just fucking said--”

“Not like that,” she had interrupted, trying to find some distance. “I mean, not temporary. Just. You should think about it. I don’t know if I’m going to be any good, coming back from this, and--”

“I don’t want another goddamn partner,” he bit out.  “ _You're_ my partner. Or at least you’re supposed to be, but you sure as shit haven’t been acting like it. Fuck, Tessa, I tell you when I’ve got the hiccups, you couldn’t tell me--”

“What was I supposed to _say_?” It burst out of her, uncontrolled, the frustration rising up from a deep well, all dragonfire and bitterness. “Scotty, I’m really sorry, but I’m kind of broken? Sorry you’ve worked so hard, and given up so much, and your family has been so nice to me, and, god, the _money_ , but there’s something wrong with me and I can’t  _fix_ it and I’ve _tried_  and what if I can’t do this anymore, I don’t, I don’t know--”

He reached across the center console to pull her in, and she buried her head against his shoulder and cried like her heart was breaking, because it was.  “Hey,” he said, rubbing her back with shaking hands. She closed her eyes tight. Didn’t want to see the look she’d put on his face. “Hey, Tess,” he said, the way he had when she was eleven and he was thirteen and she’d cut herself to the bone on her blade and they were both too shocked to move. “Tessa. Hey. It’s going to be okay,” but she knew he might be lying, and so she just cried harder.

That wasn’t what she told her mother.  Instead, she shook her head, blinking in the warm light of the living room, hoping her eyes weren’t as red as she supposed they must be.  “He says not,” she told her mother, and shrugged.

Her mum smiled, fond. She had a soft spot a mile wide for Scott, something that made Tessa want to throw things every now and then. “He’s a good boy.”

“He’s twenty-one,” Tessa said, dull. “And Danny said he got kicked out of two bars in London last weekend for hustling pool.”

“He’s got a good heart,” her mum insisted.  “He’ll see you through this, Tess. We all will.”

And she got through it, but Scott didn’t call her for two months, and she didn’t call him, either.

* * *

It’s a river, passing rock over rock, wearing time away in silica flakes, subtracting out a canyon. It wants to flow where it wants to flow, and she’s learned by now that any dam she builds is a temporary measure. Better to acknowledge the flood plains and let the waters rise.

* * *

 It was Toronto again, this time for a radio interview, which she appreciated.  Radio was a lot easier than television. Less prep time, not as much glitz required, and the stations didn’t usually ask them to bring their medals.  They’d finished early enough that when he asked if she wanted to go grab lunch before they went their separate ways-- she needed to go shopping for her sister’s birthday, and he was in the process of packing to move house-- she said yes.  So they walked a few blocks in the April chill, Scott hopping over the slush-filled puddles at the curb and turning back to lift her up and over, setting her down softly like the judges were still watching.

“You’re gentlemanly today,” she observed, opening the door to the restaurant and gesturing him through. Returning the favor.

“Just practical,” he said, pulling off his toque and mussing his hair in the process.  She reached out and tried to flatten out the cowlick sticking up in the back. He pulled a face.  “I’ve heard your lecture about what salt does to suede too many times.”

“It’s not a lecture,” she said.

“More of a thesis,” he agreed, and she smacked his arm with her gloves.

“I take back all the nice things I said about you,” she said while he put their name down with the host: two for Scott, first available.

“Too late, they’ve got it on tape,” he told her. “And Milton has, like, hours of you pretending to like me that I’ve been reliably informed might be turned into a book. So I’m afraid your cover is blown, Virtue.”

“So’s yours,” she said.  “You were all kinds of nice to me in there. ‘Oh, she’s so smart, tell them about university, Tessa,’” and she made her voice do the frat boy thing that sounded nothing like him. “Don’t think I don’t know it’s because you’re scared of the radio.”

“I’m not scared!” he said, and she raised an eyebrow, because he totally was.  “I don’t know,” Scott said. “It’s like, you sound awesome on radio. And I sound like a moron who doesn’t know what to say. And my voice is always weird.”

“Everyone thinks their voice sounds weird when they hear it on tape,” she said.  The host led them to their table, handing them menus with a look of, I-feel-like-I-should-know-who-you-are-but-I-don’t.  They’d been been getting a lot of that for the past month and a half, which was maybe to be expected when your face was on magazines at the check-out line.  It was strange, and she wasn’t comfortable with it yet.

“You sounded great. You sounded like you,” she told Scott, because he had.  He’d made her feel like it was a conversation around a kitchen table, not the tenth interview in a month.  “Besides, you’re always the one who bails me out when I freeze on TV. It’s only fair.”

Scott hummed, reading over the menu.  “TV’s okay, except for the pancake makeup.  I can get away with making faces on TV,” and that was exactly what he did, sometimes, especially when she was nervous.  “Hey. How much would you hate me if I ordered garlic bread? Like, just seven orders of it and nothing else.”

She wrinkled her nose.  “I don’t think there are enough mints in the world to deal with that. But I’m not making out with you and we’re taking separate cars after this, so.  It’s not my problem, I guess?”

“Don’t pull your punches or anything,” he said, and tapped his foot lightly against hers under the table.  Lightly, because he knew how much everything still hurt. They were hoping that dialing back the intensity of their workouts would help, but some days the pain was still so awful she couldn’t breathe.  It wasn’t bad today, though.

“Truth hurts, Scotty,” she said, fighting a smile.  “I’m just wondering what you’ve been doing that calls for so much carb-loading.”  And she was joking, mostly, but there was a little bit of her that wasn’t. He looked tired around the eyes.  Probably another late night. Patrick had said there’d been a lot of those, the last time they’d talked.

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, you know.”

“Mm,” she agreed. “A gentleman who eats seven orders of garlic bread probably won’t have a lot of kissing in his future at all, I’d bet.”  That was suitably non-judgmental, right? Just some light back-and-forth. No nagging, no third degree, no _who is she_ , _do I know her_ , _is it serious_.  They had worked so hard over the past two years, trying to build back trust and communication after everything fell apart, trying to find that solid foundation under their feet.  And the mental coaching-- therapy, counseling, whatever-- helped. It had helped so much, but she still found herself afraid she’d say or do one final thing, and that would be it: hang up the skates, turn off the lights. Exeunt Scott, pursued by Tessa’s insecurities.

When the server came to take their order, Scott pointedly ordered grilled chicken with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows, and Tessa laughed until her belly ached.

“I’m going to put that on my resumé,” he told her, looking pleased with himself as she tried to breathe through the lingering giggles.  “Under special skills: ‘Not bad at twizzles, rudimentary French, skate sharpening, and making Tessa Virtue lose her shit.’”  He tapped his foot against hers again, friendly-like.

“Hey, Scotty,” she said, because it felt good to just to say his name, her cheeks sore from smiling. And then, “It’s good to see you,” like they hadn’t just spent an hour talking at each other through microphones, or four hours on Wednesday listening to music and arguing about routines for the upcoming season with Marina.

“Hey, T,” he said, smiling with his eyes. She loved everything about him when it was like this. “You still having fun?”

She nodded. It was something he’d started asking her a few months after she got back on the ice for the first time after the surgery. “Yeah,” she said. “Yes. You?”

“Yeah,” he said, and then added, “Mostly,” with a dry laugh and rubbed the back of his neck.  “Skating’s good, I like that, I can do that, that’s fun. Work’s work. Doing interviews is whatever, but I don’t mind if you’re around.  It’s all the rest of it that’s got me--”

“A little fucked up?” she asked, trying to be kind about it.

He bobbed his head.  “A little fucked up,” he agreed, spreading his hands across the table, palms up, like: _what am I supposed to do with all of this_?

Her hands found his hold the way they had for thirteen years, unerring.  She squeezed, feeling his fingers return the pressure. “Do you need anything from me?” she asked.  “Anything I can do?”

He shook his head.  “Not unless you’ve got some surefire way to get past a case of, help, I won a gold medal, now what?”

“I’ve been watching a lot of Parks and Rec with Jordan on weekends and tearing up at things that aren’t sad, so-- I don’t think I do.”

“We’re really good at this, aren’t we,” he said, rubbing his thumbs across the back of her hands before letting go.

“We’re amazing,” she agreed.  “We’ve got this early twenties existential crisis shit _down_ ,” and it felt good to see Scott laugh at that, big and open and bright.  Maybe she could add that to her own resumé. Areas of expertise: Excel spreadsheets, ice dancing, and Scott Moir.  “Just think, if one gold medal has us this twisted up, what would two back-to-back be like?”

“Want to find out?” Scott asked, just as the server came to their table with their food, and Tessa blurted, “You want Sochi?” as the girl slid a bowl of soup in front of her, because they hadn’t actually set that as the next big goal yet, but there it was, perched on her shoulder all the time.

“Yeah,” he said, “I could do another Olympics.  What about you?”

“I’m in if you’re in,” she told him, and he said, “I’m definitely in,” and she wanted to dance.  Just-- a big, over-the-top MGM musical number with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, with the whole restaurant joining in with triumphant jazz hands.

The server asked, “Is there anything else I can get you folks?”

“Another gold medal,” Tessa said, shimmying her shoulders just a little, the closest she could get to a proper happy dance. She was going to have to make sure to leave a big tip, because wait staff shouldn’t have to put up with her ridiculousness. And she felt pretty damn ridiculous right now.

“I’m sorry?” said the server, clearly not used requests for Olympic hardware.

“Ignore her,” Scott said, apologetic, and he was doing the thing where he tried to project  _Why are you like this?_ , but it came out all, _You might be my favorite but don’t you dare tell anyone_ instead.

Tessa stuck her tongue out at him, because she was giddy with the notion that there was a plan-- vague and foggy around the edges, but a plan-- for the next four years.  That meant she had another four years before she’d need to figure out what she would do without competition. Without Scott.

Scott poked at his grilled chicken, considering.  

“Actually,” he told the confused server, setting his fork on his plate, “I’ll take an order of garlic bread, please.”

* * *

It’s a river, passing rock over rock--

No.

No, stop, that’s not right.

It’s not a river. Better to think of it as shards of prairie wind, slicing deep, unstoppable, the loneliest sound she’s ever heard.

* * *

It wasn’t like she stopped skating; short of paralysis, she wasn’t sure anything could ever make her do that.  And Tessa knew there was _nothing_ \-- not even paralysis-- that could prevent her from dancing.  And she and Scott still did a few tours over the course of the year, meeting to rehearse on weekends to keep their hands in, and dialing up the intensity a few weeks before each one started. But it was odd to wake up in the morning and face a day full of something that was mostly not about training her body to do the impossible.

Instead her days were filled with quiet mornings at the barre, business meetings where she looked at designs and listened to pitches about how this look would “blend style with strength,” talked with lawyers and accountants about contracts and investment portfolios, worked through her readings for cross-cultural psychology (because she was going to finish her degree before the heat death of the universe), took speaking engagements at local schools and community centers, did interviews and photoshoots, physio, long evenings at the gym, and nights out dancing with friends and dates, sex (sometimes), weekends at the rink, and Sunday mornings in her mum’s kitchen.  She was twenty-five, a two-time Olympian, and the world was a big place. She kept busy.

It wasn’t enough.

So she added benefits, charities, jewelry lines.  Running. Tessa figured that if she just kept going-- just added one more thing-- she’d learn not to notice the part that was empty.

She wasn’t an idiot; she knew exactly what it was that was missing, because she’d worried about how she’d handle this particular absence since she was fourteen and burning with a crush like a fever.  

_theres a woman with five weiner dogs on the patio outside of the grind_

Scott texted her all the time.  Tessa wasn’t sure if it helped or not, but she knew what not talking to him felt like, and she didn’t want that, either.  And it wasn’t as though they never saw each other-- they met up at the rink at least every weekend.

“I think that’s how normal people do friendship, Tess,” Jordan had told her when she complained about it, about how distant everything felt.  How distant she felt. “Mostly we don’t live in each other’s back pockets every moment of every day.”

She was sitting at her kitchen table, articles spread out in front of her, all highlighted and underlined and tabbed into oblivion. She’d spent the last two hours reading four pages, and couldn’t remember any of it, and so picked up her buzzing phone with relief. Focus wasn’t coming easily today.

_shes letting them drink out of her coffee cup T_

**That can’t be good for them** , she tapped out.

**Also, so gross!**

**Picture? I need to see the puppies.**

_apparently its decaf_

_which is good can you imagine five weiner dogs on caffeine_

**I can imagine a lot of yapping and too many short legs** , she sent back, smiling.  Most of Scott’s texts were sort of things he used to tell her about as they warmed up, or in the backseats of cars or while waiting in line to register at competitions. Daily asides, little offerings he knew would make her laugh.

_its hard to get a picture of all five of them they wouldnt sit still_

_but here_ [image1.jpeg]

_T their names are eeney, meeney, miney, moe, and stephen its awesome_

**OMG,**  she responded, and saved the picture on her phone, because she needed that, and also because Jordan and her mum would love it.  Scott was sitting on the pavement outside The Grind in the middle of a tangle of leashes and furry, tubular bodies, and he was clearly trying to angle his phone to include all of the dogs.  It wasn’t a great picture, technically-- he was squinting into the sun, and there was a dachshund-shaped blob covering part of his face. It was still amazing.

_moe is the blurry one trying to eat my ear_

_im trying to convince their mom to let me borrow them_

_permanently_

**I’m so jealous** , she wrote.

**This may be your new contact photo.**

**And why Stephen?**

_why not stephen_

_stephens an excellent name for a dog_

_next time you come out to ilderton i bet i can introduce you_

And that was the hard part. It wasn’t as though they were on opposite sides of the country; with decent traffic, she could be out in Ilderton in forty-five minutes.  He came in to London and Toronto often enough-- she really ought to do her part. It wasn’t a good idea, though. Scott kept hinting she should come out for a visit, and she found herself reaching for the thinnest of excuses.

**I may never be able to leave my apartment again** , she texted back, taking a picture first of the mess of study materials on her table, and then a selfie, trying to look as overwhelmed as possible. Sent them both.

**Seminar paper is killing me.**

_ugh_

_also youre a tree murderer_ , he responded, because he had always made fun of her need for hard copies of readings, even when they were doing classes through AMDEC in high school.

_whats the paper on?_

**Cross-cultural difference on emotional judgement.**

_explain using small words pls_

She rolled her eyes. Scott insisted on acting like she was some sort academic wunderkind, but he was entirely capable university studies himself. It just wasn’t where his interests were, which was fair. She just wished he wouldn’t play dumb.  **It’s research on whether people from different cultural backgrounds interpret emotional expressions the same way** , she wrote.

**Like, if you make an angry face, do people in Japan identify it as anger in the same way that people in Canada do.**

_i have extensive experience in this field_ , he texted back immediately.

_i know for a fact that canadian angry face translates in japan because of kyoto_

**That’s anecdotal evidence** , she responded.

**I need stuff that’s peer reviewed and scholarly.**

**And not based on karaoke adventures.**

_chiddy was there_

_he’s my peer_

_and hes pretty scholarly so i think it counts_

She laughed quietly.  **I’ll take it under advisement** , she sent.

**What are you up to today, aside from playing with every dog in Ilderton?**

_coached the 7-10s this morning_

_theyre still tiny and they fall a lot_

_i keep waiting for them to not be so small or to fall less but it hasnt happened yet_

Scott had slid back into Ilderton after their retirement, comfortable and certain of his welcome, part of the Moir skating clan.  He rented a neat house on the outskirts of town, and had his family all around him. Tessa couldn’t help but feel envious; as unsettled as Scott had been after Vancouver, it seemed like he’d found what he wanted and was working to put down roots.  By comparison, she felt like she was drifting off to parts unknown, unmoored.

_went for a run after_ , Scott continued.

_and now coffee with stephen and co before i take kaitlyn out for our anniversary_

God.

Tessa hated feeling like this, because it was small and mean and horrible, and Kaitlyn was a sincerely great person and Scott loved her, but there it was: she didn’t want to go to Ilderton, because when Scott said, “We’d love to see you,” he didn’t mean just his parents and siblings. And it wasn’t like Scott had never dated before-- he’d nearly always had a girlfriend once they’d hit their late teens. But this felt different, and Tess wasn’t sure she was a good enough actress to fool someone who knew her as well as Scott did.

**Oh, congrats!** she replied, aware that she’d waited too long for it to look genuine. Hopefully Scott would just think she got distracted with her work or something.

**This is two years, right?**

_yep_

_pressures on to do something more exciting next year lol_ , he wrote, and she said, “Fuck,” because odds were that Scott didn’t mean a surprise trip to Paris or something.

She sent him back a smiley face and a heart, because she didn’t know what else to say.

-*-

Jordan didn’t ask questions when Tessa called her from outside her apartment building that evening and said, “Can I come up and not think for a while?”  She just buzzed her in, and had a bottle of wine ready by the time Tessa knocked on the door.

The next morning, Tessa woke up on Jordan’s couch with a red wine hangover, desperate for the bathroom, uncomfortable in her jeans and eyes gummed up with yesterday’s makeup.

“Hey,” she heard Jordan say, and the couch sank a little near her knees.  “How you doing, kid?”

“Mmhn,” Tessa complained, and tried to kick her sister off the couch.  Her legs were too tangled up in a blanket pinned beneath Jordan’s butt to manage much force, though.

“No,” Jordan said, patient.  “This is what you deserve for trying to solve your problems with my alcohol supply.  Which you will be replenishing, by the way.”

“S’rry,” Tessa said, and tried to remember if she’d told Jordan anything.  There might have been crying, based on how sandy her eyes felt right now. And given the DVD cases on the coffee table, there’d been a lot of 1990s romcoms, too, which probably hadn’t helped matters.

“I have to head in to work, so I need an indication if you’ve got your shit together, of if I need to call Mum for backup.”

Tessa pushed herself upright.  Tried to ignore the way her stomach wanted to rebel.  “I’m okay,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as Jordan.  She leaned over-- slow, god, why was red wine so _mean_ \-- to pick up her bag the floor by the couch.  It felt too light, and she scrambled to open it, where was--

“I took your phone,” Jordan told her, pulling it out of a pocket in her skirt and laying it in Tessa’s hand.  “You were pretty insistent that you shouldn’t have it.”

“Drunk me was probably right,” Tessa said, clutching her phone close, because-- yes. That would have been a terrible, terrible idea.  Good job, drunk Tessa.

“You want to let me in on why you needed to drink all my wine and watch every Meg Ryan movie in existence on a Tuesday night?” Jordan asked, twirling her keys.

Tessa unlocked her phone and opened up Scott’s messages from the previous day. Handed it over.  Watched Jordan’s face as she scrolled through the conversation: amused, amused, fond, amused-- eyebrows. Concerned.

“You think he’s going to propose,” Jordan said, and Tessa shrugged.  Twisted her hands in the blanket on her lap. She hadn’t let herself actually think about it in those terms, but-- yes.

“Okay,” Jordan said, standing up and straightening her skirt.  “Okay, so Scott’s probably going to propose. And you’re upset about that.  To the point that you’re hungover on my couch. So why are you upset about Scott maybe proposing?”

Tessa’s head jerked up to look at her sister.  “Because,” she said, helpless. “I don’t know--”

“Yes, you do,” Jordan said, gathering her purse and laptop bag.  “You’re not dumb and neither am I. Don’t lie.”

“Because he knows what he wants out of the rest of his life, and I don’t,” Tessa tried, and it sounded like it might be true. It probably was, some of the time. She liked having a plan, and right now she was just making it up as she went along.

“Ugh,” said Jordan, “You guys are the literal _worst_.”  She opened the door to leave.  “You know what? Next time you do this, I’m just going to go ahead and call Scott for you and let you deal with the fallout.”

“ _You're_ the worst,” Tessa called, letting herself fall back against the couch cushions. Maybe if she closed her eyes and didn’t move, she could sink into them like loose change and hairpins and the remote.  Disappear for a while. Surely no one would notice.

“Love you, too,” Jordan said, then, “Don’t forget to lock up before you leave,” and the door shut behind her, leaving Tessa alone, brilliant sun starting to snake through the windows.

“Oh, god,” Tessa said to the quiet, covering her face with her hands because she was trying not to put a name to the problem, and then, “Oh, _god_ ,” and ran for the bathroom as her stomach went to water, nearly tripping herself with the blanket wound around her legs.  She made it just in time, and crouched over the toilet to be sick until there was nothing left.

It maybe wasn’t the greatest way to realize she was head over ass in love with her best friend, but there it was.

-*-

The following six months were not her best: there were some ill-advised dates, an ill-advised boyfriend or two, and a few too many nights when she saw the ugly side of four AM. And if she was sometimes slow to respond to Scott’s texts, or distracted when they FaceTimed, or too busy to grab lunch after practicing for SOI-- it was just because she was trying not to monopolize his time.  He had Kaitlyn, and Jordan was right; normal friends didn’t live in each other’s back pockets.

Instead, she buckled down on schoolwork, turning her seminar paper into an Honors thesis.  She found a new dance studio in her neighborhood, signed up for expert-level classes on hip-hop and contemporary.  She tried rock climbing, because it looked like something that might wear her out enough to sleep. She went to Paris twice on buying trips with Hillberg & Berk, and tried to figure out if the fashion industry was really where she wanted to go.

In the end, though, it came back to Scott. Everything always had.

“You’re quiet today,” she said, sitting beside him on a bench at the rink in London, lacing up for a run-through of Stay. They had three weeks before the next tour started, and their rehearsals had felt perfunctory and distant, which she knew was largely her fault.  She bent over, trying to pull her socks straight so they wouldn’t lump up inside her skates. “Everything okay?” she asked. Scott didn’t respond.

She put a hand on his knee and squeezed lightly.  “Earth to Scotty,” she said, and he blinked. Smiled at her, but it wasn’t real, not at all.  “What’s the matter?” she asked, because now that she was really letting herself look, she could tell something was wrong.  His eyes were tired, swimming in deep circles, and he looked pale under his lingering tan.

“Let it go, Tess,” Scott said, sounding exhausted.

“You look awful,” she said, and pressed the back of her hand to his cheek, trying to check for a fever.  He ducked his head. She pulled her hand back, stung and trying not to show it. “Sorry,” she said, low.

He shook his head.  Exhaled slowly. “No,” he said.  “Not your fault. I shouldn’t have come in like this, but--”

“But your partner’s been off her game and you were trying to help her out,” Tessa said, offering an olive branch.

“That,” he said, “and also I needed the distraction.”  He shrugged. Put his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor.  “Kaitlyn moved out,” he said, quiet, and Tess said, “Oh, Scotty,” because she loved him and he was her friend and he was hurting, and that was all she needed to know.  She reached out, tentative, and said, “Can I--?”

Scott leaned in, and she wrapped him up tight, bending him towards her to take his weight.  She thought about saying something: _I'm so sorry_ , maybe, or _it'll be okay_.  She was selfishly glad to realize there was no terrible part of her willing to say anything nasty about Kaitlyn.  Instead, she focused on breathing deep and even, fingers curling and uncurling in the soft hair at the back of his neck, ignoring the damp spots she felt growing on her shoulder.  

Eventually, she felt his breathing start to match hers, and some of the tension drained out of his back.  “Hey,” she said as he sat back up, running his thumb under his eyes, catching the last bits of moisture and wiping them away.  “Do you want to call off practicing today?”

He shook his head.  “No,” he said, and his voice sounded thick and awful.  He cleared it, and tried again. “No,” he said, “What I’d like is to skate until I’m not thinking about it anymore.”

“Okay,” she said, and stood up, offering him her hands. “So we’ll skate.”  If he wanted to skate, she’d stay out on the ice with him until the rink closed around them. “How about we table Stay, then,” she suggested, because god knew anything borderline romantic was probably a terrible idea. “Step sequence opener to Mujer Latina until we crash?”  Scott made a face, but took her hands and let her pull him up. “You know it’ll wear you out.”

“True,” he said, and squeezed her hands, following her out onto the ice.  And if their holds were sloppy and her legs started throbbing after the sixth pass through the samba section and their backwards inside twizzles were as awful as they’d ever been, it didn’t matter, because by the end there was color in Scott’s face, and his attention was there, on the ice, with her.

* * *

It’s like-- it’s like sitting bare-legged in the backyard in summer, full afternoon light heavy like water, feeling the sun coaxing out freckles one at a time, the grass faintly damp under her feet.  It feels green, and golden.

It feels like that.

* * *

The problem was she wasn’t sure how to approach the subject, and the advice she received was contradictory at best.

“I think you just sit him down,” Jordan said while Scott went off to pee, “and say: ‘Look, everyone in the known world thinks I’ve got a thing for you, and I’ve come to realize they’re right--’”

“That is _not_ what I meant,” Tessa hissed, mortified, hoping to god no one could hear Jordan over the bass.  She was sweaty from dancing, and her hair was sticking to the back of her neck. She probably looked like a panicked mess. “I meant--”

“Don’t care, birthday girl,” Jordan said, and tossed back another shot.  “You’ve been drunk and sad on my couch more than once in the past year, so I am telling you how to solve your problems, and this is how you do it.  You just grab him and say: ‘Jordan says I should hurry up and marry you, because she’s got a killer toast already written,’ and I do, you know, it’s going to bring down the goddamn house--”

“What’s going to bring down the house?” Scott asked, suddenly behind her, pressing a cold water bottle to the back of Tessa’s neck and wrapping his arm around her midsection.

_Please, for the love of god_ , Tessa looked at Jordan and pled with her eyes.  _Please stop talking, please stop, please, I will do anything_ \--

“Tessa’s fashion collaboration,” Jordan said, dry as the Sahara and entirely unconvincing.

Scott peered around her shoulder to look at Tessa’s face. She tried to force it into something smooth and unconcerned. Must not have worked, because Scott shook his head, like: _Women_. Said, “Drink the water, Virtch, and then we’re back out on the floor, okay?” and she tilted her head back against his chest and said, “Okay,” because that was exactly what she wanted to do anyway.

“God, the literal _worst_ ,” Jordan said, and Tessa flicked her off with one hand while she finished off the bottle of water with the other.

Kaitlyn wasn’t any better.

(Not that Kaitlyn. She ran into that Kaitlyn totally out of the blue at a shoe store in London a month after she and Scott broke up, and they were both very carefully polite to each other. Didn’t mention Scott at all.  She never told him about it, because there was nothing to tell.

Anyway: different Kaitlyn.)

“You’re definitely good enough,” Kaitlyn had said over FaceTime. “I mean, personally, I’d prefer you not being my competition again. Just, you know, on a practical level.”

“Thanks, Kait,” she’d said.  Did she used to call her Kait so often? She didn’t think so. “Good enough is definitely what I’m going for.”

Kait flopped back against her bed, hair puddled behind her.  She looked all of twelve. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Tess,” she said, sounding annoyed.  “I mean, I want you guys to be happy and I love seeing you, but it’s not like I enjoy losing to you all the freaking time.” She waved her hand in front of her face.  “Ugh,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Sorry. Strike that from the record, okay? It’s three AM and I’m feeling uncharitable.”

Tessa hummed in agreement.  “Never happened,” she said, because you didn’t keep friendships in a competitive field without some convenient amnesia.  “Didn’t hear a thing. How’s Moscow?”

“Perpetually daylight.  How’s Scott?”

“Quiet,” she said, and tried not to sound worried.  She’d been making more of an effort, post-tour, calling him in the evening most days, going out to watch him coach in Ilderton, and hoping against hope that she wasn’t a horrifically transparent as she thought she might be.

“What’s he think about getting back into competition?” Kaitlyn asked, and-- that was the question she hadn’t figured out how to bring up.

“Haven’t asked yet,” Tessa mumbled, looking anywhere but at the screen.

Kait blinked at her across seven time zones.  “Well,” she said. “See, there’s your problem.”

-*-

She knew perfectly well what her problem was.  Her problem was, what if she asked and--

Her problem was--

Her problem was that she wanted to skate again, and she wanted Scott, and she was pretty sure she could only have one at a time, and she wasn’t sure which one she wanted more.

-*-

In the end, it was a Saturday, and they’d been playing around with a hip-hop routine for four hours mostly to see who could come up with the most complicated footwork, and he’d followed her back to her apartment without either of them mentioning it.

“Do you want me to order Thai?” she asked, pulling her hair up as she came out of her bedroom in a clean t-shirt and sweats.  “Or Chinese, I guess-- there’s a good place around the corner.”

“Chinese is fine,” Scott said, sounding absent.  He was standing in front of the shadow box she had hanging between bookshelves, the one with her medals in it.  She went and stood next to him, and he wrapped an arm around her. Pulled her in, her back to his chest. “Pretty,” he said, resting his chin on her shoulder, and she nodded at him in the reflection.  

“Yeah,” she said.  “They are.” Even the silver ones. It had taken her a while to realize that.

“Tessa,” he said, and he wasn’t looking at the medals, he was looking at her.

She shivered, half turning in the loose hold of his arms.  Opened her mouth to say-- something, she didn’t know what, and he brushed a thumb over her bottom lip.

“This okay?” he asked, and his voice sounded like it did when she called him in the middle of the night, all close and broken with sleep.

She nodded.  Said, “Yeah,” and tilted her head up, heart in her throat, and then it was a kiss, soft and chaste, just the brush of mouths getting used to each other.  “Oh,” she said, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Couldn’t stop looking at him. His eyebrows were being ridiculous.

“Okay,” he said, and he was breathing harder than a press of lips should have necessitated.  “Okay, let’s just--” and then interrupted himself by finding her mouth again, and this time it wasn’t soft and chaste.  This time it was warm, and desperate, and made every nerve in her body sing out at once.

“Oh my god,” she said, burying her face against his chest when they ran out of air and clinging to him like she’d collapse otherwise.  “Scott, oh my god.” She felt him press a kiss to her hair, the corner of her jaw. The curve of her neck. He was murmuring something, but she couldn’t make it out.

“You’re a menace,” she said, pulling back and sliding her palm up to rest against the side of his face, smiling and shattered and full of unspeakable, terrible joy.  He wrapped his hand around hers, and pulled it to his mouth. Kissed her fingers, like it was the end of a waltz. “Scotty,” she started, and maybe her voice gave her away, because she felt the tension go through his body.

“What’s the matter, Tess?” he said, and she knew that if she did this wrong, they’d both get hurt.

“Nothing’s the matter,” she said, because she needed him to understand that, first, before anything else.  “And you can say no, I promise. I just-- I want to keep kissing you,” she said, and his smile was something she wanted to trace with her fingertips, just to know it better.  He opened his mouth, and she shook her head. “I want to keep kissing you, for as long as you’ll let me,” she repeated, “And I also want to compete. With you. I want to try for the Olympics again.”  

She tried to read his expression, but couldn’t.  He wasn’t blank-- it just wasn’t an expression she recognized.  “Is this a one or the other proposition?” he asked, because that was the heart of it, wasn’t it?

“I don’t want it to be,” she said, and didn’t like how scared she sounded.  “I want to skate with you again, and not just on tour, and I want you to kiss me again, and I want to wake up with you, and work with you, both of them, together.  But,” and she tried to think: long term, what did she want? If she had to choose--

“Okay,” said Scott, and ducked his head down to kiss her.  Reassuring and distracting, all at once.

“Okay, what?” she said, flustered, as they broke apart.  It was hard to focus.

“Okay, let’s do it,” he said, and going red, clarified: “The Olympics. And the kissing. If you’re in, I’m in, T.”

“But,” she said, her head spinning.  She was fairly certain nothing was supposed to be this easy.  “You really think we can do both?”

Scott shrugged, his eyes crinkling at the corners.  “I’m pretty sure we can do at least one, and we’re not bad at skating, either,” and she shoved at his chest and said, “Why do I even love you,” and he froze before pulling her in so tightly she thought her heart might burst.

“I’ve been asking myself that for most of my life,” he said, and she laughed, because there wasn’t room for any more joy inside her chest.

* * *

It’s nothing she can describe, however much she tries: it's nothing of the elements or imagination or body.  It’s alive in her in the best of ways, unchanging and chaotic by turns. She doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know its name, the need and hunger and contentment curled in her belly, dancing in her fingertips.  In the end, she can’t explain it, not even to him; but then, he doesn’t need her to.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't get overly excited, okay? This probably isn't the droid you were looking for. (But it's still a decent robot, I think.)

It’s sliding towards dark, and the bonfire is shooting tiny marigolds into the night, confusing fireflies.  Tessa’s flushed in the face, half from the heat, half from the beer, and half again from laughing. Behind her, she can hear Danny’s wife saying something about moving a picnic table, and Jordan’s voice joins in.  There’s a scuffling sound of wood on packed dirt. Tessa filters it out, instead swaying a little to the Otis Redding playing through someone’s phone. She’s buzzed, and surrounded by the best people she knows. It’s not a bad feeling.

“You doing okay, Virtch?” Scott says, and slides his arms around her midsection. His left hand interlaces with hers, and she feels his thumb trace the underside of her ring.  He does that a lot, now. She doesn’t mind.

Tessa leans her weight back against his shoulder.  “I’m great. You?” she asks, because when she last saw him, he’d been getting chewed out by Alma for encouraging his niece to set her marshmallows on fire before making s’mores. 

He presses a quick kiss to her temple.  “Eh, Mum’s really just mad she didn’t think of a marshmallow torch relay herself.”

Tessa hums.  “It would have been thematically appropriate, I guess.”

“Patrick could carry the flag, he’d like that,” Scott says, and Tessa half turns to him and says, “If I see him up there with you holding a  _ flag  _ on Saturday--,” because she knows how his mind works, and right now it’s going nowhere good.

“You’ll do what?” he asks.  “Turn around and leave? You won’t.”

She narrows her eyes at him.  “Try me.”

He raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say it.  “Too easy,” he says, and then, “Besides, you wouldn’t. You’ve never walked away from anything in your whole life.”

There’s nothing for it but to kiss him, so she does, forgetting that the dark doesn’t hide them entirely.  Someone behind them whoops, and at any other time she’d be embarrassed, but he tastes like burnt sugar and whisky and he’s hers, and Tessa wants nothing more than to pull him back around the shadowed corner of the barn and disappear for a while.  

“I feel like I’d better do this before the rating increases,” someone’s voice says, coming from up over her head.  Tessa pulls back from Scott, annoyed at the interruption, and turns to find Jordan looming above them both, feet planted on the top of a picnic table.  She’s got a beer in one hand, and a creased paper in another, and Tessa cringes.

“Jordan,” she protests, but she’s too late, because Danny’s wife-- who Jordan seems to have conscripted as a co-conspirator, god, maybe marriage is a terrible idea after all-- picks up a fork and starts chiming it against the neck of her own beer, and when that fails to draw attention, tilts her head back and shouts, “ _ Hey! Shut up! _ ” at the crowd and then adds a tacked on, “Please,” when the chatter starts to die down.

Jordan inclines her head in thanks.  “I have been told, repeatedly, that I’m not supposed to do this,” she says, and Tessa glares at her, but can’t summon any real rage, “Because Tessa thinks toasts are ridiculous and embarrassing and long-winded.”  She looks down at Tessa. “But mine’s short, I promise. And also I let you choose my dress. Which means I’m owed a toast at least.”

“You told me you liked the dress! And it looks great on you,” Tess says, because it does, and Jordan totally  _ will _ wear it again and she isn’t even lying about it like Bridezillas do on television.  Jordan rolls her eyes, waiting until Tessa finally says, “Oh, go ahead, you’re going to be awful about this no matter what--,” and then Jordan straightens her paper and clears her throat, like she’s about to give an address to the United Nations or something.

“First,” she says, “I want everyone to know that I have been carrying this speech in my purse for five goddamn years, because everyone thinks Tessa’s the planner in this family-- and that’s mostly true. But Tessa plans her life around skating and medals and MBAs and programs and media and somehow managing to live with Scott without strangling him,” and Tessa feels Scott exhale a laugh against her neck, “and my plans are mostly about making sure she remembers that it’s okay if she sometimes can’t do any of that and just needs to crash on my couch on a Saturday afternoon and watch terrible reality television and paint her nails.  So this thing’s been in every bag I’ve owned for half a decade,” Jordan says, and her voice is a little thick, “Because I was pretty sure I’d need it one day, even if Tessa wasn’t,” and this is why Tessa doesn’t do heartfelt toasts, because she can feel her eyes well up, and  _ shit _ , she isn’t wearing waterproof mascara. 

“So,” Jordan says, and holds up her beer, and waiting until the crowd does the same.  “A toast. To Tessa and Scott,” she says. “For all the five AM practices, all the sacrifices you made for yourself, and for each other, and for all the sacrifices made around you, for all the sequins and tight pants, all the crushes on each other you were both  _ terrible _ at hiding--” 

Someone calls out, “Tell me about it,” from somewhere out in the dark and Jordan nods, saying, “Danny, we'll have to exchange notes about this later, I have stories.  Remind me to tell you about the Great Oh No He’s Hot Freakout of 2006, okay?” and Tessa buries her face in Scott’s shoulder, feeling it shake as he laughs. Forget strangling Scott; if Jordan tells that story, no one will ever find the body.

“Back to the serious stuff,” Jordan continues: “For all the pain, and all the doubts, and all the work you both put in when it would have been easier to walk away, for all the times it was hard from the outside not to resent you both for stealing the air out of a room, for all the times you made us so proud we couldn’t breathe, for every time we all told someone, ‘No, they’re not dating,’ without finishing the sentence, ‘but they clearly should be,’” and that gets a roll of cheers, because their friends and families are  _ awful _ , “For every one of those moments that brought you here to each other,” Jordan says, and she’s not addressing the crowd now.  “For every one of those moments,” she says again, like she’s sitting on the couch next to Tessa, feet tucked up under a blanket against the cold, “I wish you both joy, and all the world and time to see just how far it goes.”

Tessa smiles, and it feels watery.  She’s glad of Scott’s arms around her. She’s always glad of them.  “So,” Jordan says, and clears her throat again. “Raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen: to Tessa and Scott!”

Their friends echo back the toast and cheer, a ghost of it bouncing off the barn and across the lake, and Jordan hops down from the picnic table as everyone drains their glasses and applauds. Tessa spots her mother and Alma digging through their purses for tissues.

Scott lets Tessa go, and she tries not to feel abandoned as he wraps Jordan up in a one-armed hug. “Thanks,” he says, low, and it doesn’t sound like much, but Tessa can hear the weight of it, and then, “Five years, huh?”

Jordan shrugs.  “You were slower than I anticipated, Moir,” she tells him.

“To be fair,” he says, and glances at Tessa, and oh-- she knows where this is going.  She sighs, because they both come out of this looking like uncommunicative dorks, and Scott continues, clearly delighted to let Jordan in on the joke, “To be fair, I’ve had the ring for three.”  He nudges his shoulder against Tessa, and she follows his lead, because he’s right: when has she ever walked away from anything.

“And I found it about a week later, because Scott’s terrible at hiding things,” Tessa admits. “We just didn’t talk about it for, like, a year.”

“Seven months,” he says, and he’s probably right, but it had felt like a year, wondering why it was just sitting there in his sock drawer, judging her all the time.  “After we got back to Montreal.”

Jordan stares for a moment, and then says, “I’m so fucking glad the two of you found each other, because god help anyone else who tries to understand you,” and then wraps Tessa up in a hug, saying, “I hate you both so much right now,” and then, “The dress really  _ is _ nice, Tess, and I’ll totally wear it again,” and Tessa knows exactly what she’s saying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, this is still all fiction. Yep, I still feel weird about writing this. But apparently not weird enough to stop.


End file.
